


xii. but a looted museum

by kapteeni



Series: ghost— [5]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Found Family, Gen, Gore, Immortality, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Pre-Joui War, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-05 17:59:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18833824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kapteeni/pseuds/kapteeni
Summary: Someone puts a hand on his head. The Shiroyasha flinches, scrambles backwards; he hadn’t heard anyone approaching.“I came after hearing about a corpse-eating demon,” says the someone, their voice soft and measured. There is no hint of fear in it, and the absence makes everything seem alien. “Would that be you?”





	xii. but a looted museum

Here’s how a soldier dies: 

First, they are cut down. They are trampled by a horse, bones crushed into splinters. They are pierced by a spear, organs failing as they bleed into the dirt. A sword rips open their stomachs, a fist crushes their skull, an arrow cuts through muscle like paper. Or perhaps they don’t die on the battlefield, but succumb in camp, wasting away to fever or for want of rations. 

At the time of death, their muscles slacken, releasing whatever tension their lives held. The bladder empties. The heart stops. The body goes cold. No one dies with their eyes closed. 

Within thirty minutes, a dead man’s skin turns waxy. Their lips go white as blood stops circulating, and purple-red bruises appear where the body presses into the ground, blood pooling. The eyes begin to sink into the skull. 

The bodies stack up, the dead of both sides hastily thrown into mass graves. They press against each other, unnaturally twisted. Bones snap under the pressure. Teeth and fingernails snag in skin. 

The living do not perform any funeral rites. They are tired, and do not want to be around death longer than they have to. 

Four hours later, the body begins to stiffen. 

Then, it begins to digest itself. Underneath the skin, damaged blood cells spill out of broken vessels. Bacteria in the stomach begins to eat at the intestines, going from liver to heart to brain. 

Flies gather, not for themselves, but to lay their eggs. They go for the eyes first, then open wounds, then to any other moist, warm areas: the creases of the lips, the groin, the armpits. Each female can lay up to a hundred and fifty eggs at once, five hundred in her lifespan. Eight hours after that, the maggots begin to hatch. Though the body has cooled after death, the combined heat of the larva can raise the body’s temperature by ten degrees. They have to move constantly. The inside of the body becomes so hot that any maggot that stays there for long cooks itself, but closer to the skin, they may be preyed upon by the birds that have begun to pick at the rotting flesh. 

Beetles too, are attracted by the writing mass of maggots the bodies conceal, along with ants, wasps, and spiders. Foxes tear flesh off in great swathes, then retreat. 

After three days, gas builds up in the body, blistering the skin. Those pressed into the bottom of the grave swell, abdomens bursting open and what remains of the guts exploding out. Liquified tissues leak from the anus, ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. Skin begins to slough off the skeletal frame. The maggots begin to pupate, squirming away from the bodies and towards drier areas. 

It is from this wet mass of decaying skin and rotting blood and piss and flies and dirt that the Shiroyasha emerges, naked, all sharp bones and protruding angles. His spine curls and stretches as he sits up. The crows, the only ones to bear witness to his birth, caw and hop away, but do not flee the scene entirely. They wait to see if this one is really alive, and if he plans on staying that way. 

He has the body of an eight year old child, white hair that stands stark as bone and eyes the color of drying blood. When he stands up, his feet sink into the mounds of flesh, his toes digging into loose skin, but he does not stumble. 

(After this, nothing seems as real. Nothing sensory can compare, not with the feel of skin against skin, maggots writhing beneath it in a parody of life. Not with the sickly-sweet stench of two hundred rotting bodies that fills the air like an attack and brings tears to the eyes, nor with the sight of twisted bodies piled carelessly in heaps. Not with the sharp taste of iron and piss that seems to hang on the roof of his mouth and chokes him. Maybe the only thing that can overwhelm him is noise. Here, it is quiet.) 

He finds a piece of cloth—a burial shroud, maybe, or the remnants of a flag, or something else entirely, he can’t tell—and wraps himself in it. Then he settles down to wait. 

The bodies begin to dry out, and the few remaining maggots begin to pupate. They hatch a few days later, wings crumpled and damp. They glisten green and blue in the light. A few land on the Shiroyasha’s gangly knees. They rub their legs together, and the first time he sees a cat cleaning itself, it reminds him of the precise movements of a fly. 

Mushrooms burst through abdomens, and then flowers. The soil is rich. A daffodil blooms in an eye socket; grass twines between finger bones. 

Finally, the demons come. The itsumade arrive first, circling over the mass graves. They are bird creatures, wings attached to a snake-like body that slithers and swirls through the night sky, tracing undulating shapes that would make any normal watcher sick. It has a human face, framed by a thick red mane, and marred by a sharp beak. It is the first living face that the Shiroyasha ever sees. “Until when?” it shrieks, voicing echoing through the empty plains, but there is no one around to hear except him, and he slaps his hands to his ears and curls up into a ball and _screams_ until his throat is raw and blood tints his lips. 

Next come the corpse eaters. The moryo, crouching next to the ditches and pawing through the bodies with red hands, hair hanging over their faces; the jikininki, who are nigh-indistinguishable from the corpses themselves, who tear into flesh with shiny-white teeth and press thin fingers into the deceased’s pockets, mouths sagging down when they find nothing; the kasha, who descend upon the field in a flash and are gone before the Shiroyasha can see what they take. None of these creatures approach him. 

It is only when even the demons have begun to abandon the battlefield, when all the skin has slipped off the bones and formed a congealing pool of slime that has begun to disintegrate the skeletons that lay in it, that the Shiroyasha unfolds himself and stands up. He does not move with any grace. His stick thin legs shake with every step. He falls often. 

Had he stayed longer, he would have seen ghosts peeling themselves from their bodies like snakes shedding their skin. Men from both sides of battle walk through the field and wail at their misfortune, weeping for the living they left behind and the comrades who abandoned them, condemning them to walk the earth alone forever. It doesn’t matter; he will see them soon enough. 

It does not take the Shiroyasha long to find another battlefield, and this one is not silent. He watches from the edge of the trees as men run at each other, swords swinging. Those on horses trample the fallen and pierce those who remain with lances twice the Shiroyasha’s height. 

When the fighting seems to be over, and the survivors have retreated, the Shiroyasha carefully steps into the field. He picks up a sword from one of the fallen and runs the blade down his forearm. Blood beads up from his pale skin and drips into the already saturated dirt. He doesn’t see what the fuss is about. 

He lives like that, for awhile, walking through ravaged fields. He hears the living soldiers whisper prayers to themselves as he passes, but their words seem insubstantial. They call him a ghost, a demon, a corpse-eater, a monster. He wishes they would decide on one. 

But he prefers the living to the dead. The ghosts cannot see each other, and the living cannot see the ghosts, but they can all see the Shiroyasha, and they know he can see them. The ghosts crowd around him, lips moving soundlessly, pressing against one another until he can’t see through transparent flesh. It is then that he escapes again into the forests, but he always, always finds another battlefield. 

One time he falls asleep and wakes up to a demon trying to chew its way through his stomach. He doesn’t sleep as much, after that. 

He tries to avoid the actual fighting, though it doesn’t always work. The worst was probably when he had been hit in the face by a kanabou club. It had barely even broken the skin, but his skull shattered underneath. He vomited chunks of brain out of a jaw he couldn’t shut. His eyes split as shards of bone forced their way out of his head. His teeth had shattered, leaving nerves exposed and gums bleeding, and he pulled them out one by one; when they grew back in, they were too big for his mouth. He had to use a dagger to dig the back ones out, and had accidently cut a hole through his cheek, big enough to stick his tongue out of. 

That had been kinda fun, until he tried to eat. 

Someone puts a hand on his head. The Shiroyasha flinches, scrambles backwards; he hadn’t heard anyone approaching. 

“I came after hearing about a corpse-eating demon,” says the someone, their voice soft and measured. There is no hint of fear in it, and the absence makes everything seem alien. “Would that be you?” 

The Shiroyasha looks up. A man is looking down at him, his eyes shaded. He is quite different from any person the Shiroyasha has ever seen. His clothes look soft and clean, and hang loosely around his body, more like the Shiroyasha’s own makeshift robes than the uniforms of the soldiers. His hair is long and light brown, his sword hangs at his side instead of gripped in hand, and his mouth is turned upwards at the corners. 

“A rather cute demon,” says the man. 

The Shiroyasha pushes his hand away, gets to his feet. He has a sword too, and he draws it now. He has to raise his arm high above his head to get it out; it’s much longer than he is tall. There have been people who have worked up the courage to approach him before, and it has never turned out well. They beg him to give them things that the Shiroyasha has no concept of. 

“Did you take that from a corpse?” the man says, and his smile has not faded. “A single child stripping corpses to protect himself, is it? That’s very impressive.” 

The Shiroyasha brings the sword level with himself and runs his hand across the flat of the blade to steady it. 

“A sword that’s only swung in self-defense, while fearing others, should be thrown away.” The man now, finally, draws his own sword. The Shiroyasha tenses. Perhaps he should run away. Something about this person makes his blood run cold. 

Then he drops his blade, stumbles. The man has tossed his own sword to the Shiroyasha. He catches it in both hands out of instinct, falling backwards and just barely steadying himself before ass hits dirt. 

The man still stands there, bereft of any weapon and looking more terrifying than any manner of demons. “I shall give you my sword,” he says, which isn’t much of an explanation, but the man obviously thinks it is, because he turns away. “If you wish to learn how to properly use it, then come with me.” 

The Shiroyasha blinks, looks down at the sword in his hands. Is the man stupid? A sword is no kind of motivator. For one, there’s plenty around. It’s nothing more than a hunk of metal, and proper use seems to be killing people with it until someone kills you, which the Shiroyasha thinks is a waste of energy. He wonders though, surprising himself with the strangeness of the thought, what about a sword can make this man think its offering would have any significance? 

Perhaps it is _this_ sword that is special. He looks at it carefully, observing the soft, worn silk around the handle, the unbroken hamon line that makes its languorous way down the blade, the dulling point of the kissaki. Nothing about it appears any different from every other sword he’s seen. 

The ghosts are gathering again, standing around him with mouths agape. Some have swords through their chests, others have skins peeling off from a since-fatal rotting sickness, or are crawling towards him on broken limbs. The Shiroyasha makes a decision, and stands up. 

“You may call me Shouyou-sensei,” the man says later, scratching four strange figures into the dirt with a stick. He points to each one in turn. “ _Shou_ , pine; _you_ , sunshine; _sen_ , to have come before; _sei_ , life.” 

The Shiroyasha looks at it critically. He mouths the unfamiliar words. “Sensei.” It sticks in his throat; he has not spoken aloud in a very long time. He coughs, swallows, and repeats with a faint rasp, “Shouyou-sensei.” 

He doesn’t like this. There are things he wants to say, wants to ask, but he can’t seem to form the words outside his head. He feels hot and clammy, and his hands are trembling. He can’t put words to this feeling either. 

“And what are you called?” the man asks, and bends down. His fingers trace the inside folds of the Shiroyasha’s robes, then nimbly pick out the string tie hanging around his waist, and switches the folds: from right folded over left, to left folded over right. “You are going on a journey, but it will not be your final one.” 

The Shiroyasha is petrified. He has been called a lot of things, god and demon and bastard and vermin, and has never cared for any names given to him. But his mouth is dry and, in a fit of terror, he realizes this is an idea that he has no idea how to communicate non-verbally. Neither running away nor drawing a sword will signal his indifference towards what he is called. 

He blinks. 

Shouyou-sensei considers this for a moment. “Then we will have to find you a name,” he muses, and ruffles the Shiroyasha’s dirty hair. “All in due time, I suppose.” 

(‘Gintoki’ comes while they are walking through a forest. Shouyou-sensei seems to believe that all learning comes through letters; he keeps stopping to draw characters in the dirt. “A cypress leaf,” he’ll say, stopping to pick up a torn branch with rows of flat, browning springs, and use it to draw careful lines through the mud. “It’s _brown_ here and _green_ here,” he’ll continue, writing each character as he talks. 

The boy draws his sword and points to the blade. “This?” he asks. He still isn’t familiar with speech. 

“A katana,” Shouyou-sensei. “It’s silver. _Gin’iro_.” 

“ _Gin’iro_ ,” he repeats. “I’m Gin-iro.” He knows this from when Sensei first forced him to wade into a stream and drunk his head under the frigid water. Sensei had scrubbed until his scalp felt raw; when he had finally escaped to dry in the sunlight, his reflection was of a boy with pinked skin and hair fluffed up like a cloud. But not white. The boy knows what white is: the clouds, the outside of his eye, Sensei’s teeth, some of the small flowers that bloomed along the forest path, new bones, and rabbit’s fur. His hair isn’t white. It is more the color of the edge of a cloud as it passes over the sun, or a full moon, or light reflecting off a sword. 

Shouyou-sensei studies him, then smiles. “So you are,” he laughs. “But silver-colored is no name for a child. How about Gintoki?” He writes the characters in the dirt. “A time of silver.”) 

(‘Sakata’ is from the first time Gintoki sees a rice farm. He had spotted it while they were still far above, walking down a path hewn into the side of a mountain, and had pointed out the straight, uniform lines of green to Shouyou-sensei. 

Sensei had smiled and promised they would go through the next one they found. 

Gintoki had seen villages before, mostly from a distance and almost all in a state of disrepair. Any he had ventured into had thought him a thief and driven him out. This place was different. People smiled at them as they passed, and offered them food instead of taking it away. 

“This is where rice is grown,” Shouyou-sensei says when they reach one of the fields. He points to a green stalk, half submerged in water. 

Gintoki eyes it. “No,” he says. It doesn’t look anything like rice. Maybe if they cut it into little pieces, but then how did it turn white? 

“It doesn’t look like rice now,” Sensei agrees, “But in the autumn they’ll be able to harvest the grains.” He pulls one plant towards them, careful not to break it, and shows Gintoki the yellowing tops. “You can almost see them now. And after harvest season, they’ll mill off the tough shells and store it.” He lets the plant go, and it sways back into place. 

Sensei gets back to his feet with a grunt and calls out to one of the workers hunched over in the paddy. “Can we help?” 

The closest one looks up and glances skeptically at Shouyou-sensei. Gintoki knows the look because he’s given it himself; taking in the soft hands, the untanned skin, the faint smile, the long hair. “You know anything about weeding rice?” 

“Enough,” Shouyou-sensei says, “And I want to impress upon my boy the importance of honest work.” His hand lands on Gintoki’s head. 

The man shrugs. “Suit yourself. What’s your name?” 

Shouyou-sensei bows. “Yoshida,” he says. 

“That’s not your name,” Gintoki whispers. 

“It’s my family name,” Shouyou-sensei whispers back. “You call me by my given name because you’re very special to me.” 

He strips down to his loincloth and helps Gintoki shrug off his kimono, then wades into the water. He does show Gintoki the difference between weeds and rice, and how to pull them up by the roots, but mostly Gintoki likes wandering through the waving stalks. 

A woman with her hair tied up in a scarf asks, “What’s your son’s name?” 

“Gintoki,” Shouyou-sensei says. 

Gintoki, aware that he is being watched, pulls up a weed with such force that he trips and falls backwards into the water. 

“Though,” Shouyou-sensei says, grabbing Gintoki’s arm and pulling him back up as he laughs, “It may be Sakata no Gintoki.” 

When the woman leaves, Gintoki tugs again on Shouyou-sensei’s arm and asks, “What’s a son?” 

“It means you’re a part of my family.” 

Gintoki doesn’t really get that either, but he nods like this is enough explanation. The he asks, “What’s Sakata no Gintoki?” 

Shouyou-sensei smiles. “It was a joke. ‘Sakata’ is a family name that means ‘rice farm on a hill,’ which this is, and Sakata no _Kin_ toki was the name of a mountain child who is legendary for being very, very strong.” 

Gintoki considers this. “Good.”) 

Shouyou-sensei does make good on his promise to teach him the way of the sword. It starts off slow, with Shouyou lecturing as Gintoki does his best to drag along Shouyou’s sword as they walk. He’s too short to hang it at his waist, and he won’t figure out how to fasten it onto his back for another week. He has asked if Sensei wants it back, but the man always just smiles. 

He doesn’t ask about Shouyou-sensei’s first words to him until much later. Shouyou-sensei’s leaning against a tree, sword on his crossed lap, and Gintoki’s kneeling beside him, watching his thin figures stroke the blade. “And this,” Shouyou says, “is the _hi_ , the fuller, colloquially known as the blood groove. Do you know its purpose?” 

Gintoki grins. It’s not often that he knows the answer to one of Sensei’s questions. “It’s easier to get out,” he says, miming pulling an invisible sword out of Sensei’s chest. “Because…” He pauses, running out of words. “Blood,” he tries, “comes out and sound doesn’t.” He chews his lip. He _knows_ what he wants to say, the thoughts are right there, in his head, but he can’t get them out. 

Shouyou-sensei sighs. “A common legend among soldiers. In fact, it is no easier to remove from a body and the suction sound remains. It’s true purpose seems to be known only among swordsmiths. What it does it lighten the weight of the sword without sacrificing structural integrity. You see, bending causes stress on—” He catches Gintoki’s look and clears his throat. “But more importantly for us, it allows for the development of the _tachikaze_ , the sword wind.” 

Shouyou hoists himself to his feet. Gintoki watches him, wide-eyed. Sometimes, when Shouyou-sensei teaches him, it’s hard not to run away. Men standing above him swinging swords has historically resulted in him having to shoo crows away while his [shoulder/arm/stomach/leg] rots under a foraged bandage. His fingernails are too clean to dig out maggots now. He’s not sure he’d be able to return. 

Shouyou-sensei brings the blade down. Gintoki flinches, and wonders if he is becoming weak. 

“And what did you hear, Gintoki?” Shouyou-sensei asks. 

Gintoki hadn’t been listening, but he’s heard enough swinging swords to pucker his lips and let out a short whistle. 

“Correct!” Shouyou-sensei ruffles Gintoki’s hair. “And that is the tachikaze. The air running through the fuller makes a whistling sound. But only if it’s swung correctly.” He swings the blade again, angling the blade slightly differently, and now the whistling is so soft Gintoki isn’t positive it was there at all. “So we can use the tachikaze to see if the angle of our swing is correct. Everytime you pick up your sword, your goal should be to achieve proper _hasuji_ by making the edge of the sword the same angle as the cutting path.” 

Gintoki brings his knees up to his chest and watches small forest spirits clamber over rocks and up trees. They’re faint now, in the light of day, but Gintoki can see flashes of glowing white when they walk into a shadow. Sensei had said, “A sword that’s only swung in self-defense, while fearing others, should be thrown away.” But Gintoki can only think of one other reason to swing a sword, and after following Sensei, he doubts that is what he had meant. 

So he asks, “Why should I?” 

“Good question,” Shouyou-sensei says. “If the sword’s edge tilts incorrectly as you swing, the cut is less likely to make it through the target. Katana are fundamentally—” 

“No,” Gintoki interrupts. “Why should I swing my sword?” 

“I see,” Shouyou-sensei says, and smiles. “That is for you to decide.” 

Gintoki rocks back. “Why do you swing it?” 

“That is something I’m still deciding.” 

“How do I know if you even do not?” Gintoki says, frustration transforming his voice into a snarl. He doesn’t care if the sounds spilling from his lips form into words, as long as they make his anger into something real. “There’s no answer!” 

“There is,” Sensei says. “I promise you, on my life, that there is an answer.” 

“And what is life to promise on?” Gintoki scoffs. “Nothing. Life always die.” 

“It feels like a good promise when it’s your own,” Sensei laughs. “Tell me then, what should I promise on?” 

Gintoki lets his muscles relax, one by one. He hadn’t realized how he had let his back tense into a defense curl, protecting the soft flesh of his ever fattening stomach. “Dunno,” he says. 

Shouyou-sensei sits down next to him. He puts an arm around Gintoki’s shoulders and pulls him close. His thumb rubs comforting circles into Gintoki’s shoulder blades. “It is not something you need to decide on now, Gintoki,” he says. “You don’t ever need to think about it. You’ll find it on your own, someday.” 

“Not on my own,” Gintoki murmurs. He closes his eyes and leans into the embrace. 

It’s a long time before anything changes. Gintoki doesn’t have the best gauge of time; even seasons pass by unnoticed. But even he can tell that it’s been awhile. He can talk now, and barely ever falls into the pattern of aborted sentences and frustrated silences that had so plagued him. They don’t pass through towns often, but Gintoki thinks that the villagers’ clothes have changed, and it must be significant if he notices it, even if he can’t point to anything specific. Even the slang that he had picked up around other kids starts to sound antiquated. 

Shouyou-sensei has finally deemed Gintoki’s calligraphy worthy of buying paper for, and is sitting cross-legged to Gintoki’s left, watching as Gintoki carefully dips his brush into the ink. He has just put brush to paper when Shouyou-sensei covers his mouth and coughs. Gintoki drops the brush. Ink splatters across the white paper, and the brush rolls onto the dirt. He looks up guiltily, but Shouyou-sensei doesn’t stop coughing. He’s bending over now, clutching his stomach with one hand and covering his mouth with the other, and each cough wracks his whole body. 

Gintoki scrambles to Shouyou-sensei’s side, tripping as the paper slips under his foot. “Sensei,” he says, grabbing Shouyou-sensei’s wrist. He tries to pull Shouyou-sensei’s hand away from his mouth, as if removing that one indicator of whatever’s happening would get rid of everything. Sensei moves his hand from his stomach and puts it on Gintoki’s shoulder, gently pushing him away. The hand covering his mouth does not move. 

Gintoki sits back on his heels as Sensei’s coughs shudder into nothing. “Sensei,” he says again when he’s stopped coughing. “Sensei, what’s—” 

Shouyou-sensei presses a hand to his forehead. He sits like that for a second, his eyes closed, and then pushes his bangs back. “I think,” he says carefully, his voice hoarse, “It would be best if we stayed in town for a few days.” 

The closest town that Gintoki knows of is the place where Sensei had bought paper; even that is at least a day away. He doesn’t understand what could have happened; he’s been with Sensei every second of every day. Surely no one could have attacked him while Gintoki was asleep. And even then—Gintoki tries to surreptitiously check for traces of blood on Sensei’s yukata, but he sees nothing. 

By the time they’re in sight of the town, Shouyou-sensei is leaning on Gintoki for support. There’s too much of a height difference to do it comfortably, and Gintoki finds himself walking on tiptoes so Sensei can rest a hand on Gintoki’s shoulder without having to bend down too much. They’ve had to stop a lot. Sensei’s cough has become more persistent, and each step seems to exhaust him. He is often shivering, though his hand feels hot on Gintoki’s skin. 

Sensei directs Gintoki to a building that looks like every other. The kanji in the window says ‘house of travel.’ 

“It’s an inn,” Sensei says. “I think I need a room with a roof.” 

Gintoki acts as a crutch while Sensei talks to the proprietor between coughs. After Sensei has tiredly explained what a futon is, where to find it, and how to roll it out, Gintoki slips out of the room to let Sensei rest. 

“Your dad looks pretty sick,” the proprietor tells him. “Where’d you come in from?” 

“Sick?” Gintoki repeats. 

“Looked like the flu to me,” the proprietor continues. “My wife knows some medicine. Want me to ask her to go up there?” 

“Yes,” Gintoki breathes, almost reverential in his gratitude. 

The wife takes one look at Sensei and confirms her husband’s suspicion. She does take some pity on Gintoki and explains that everyone gets sick sometimes, gives a series of rapid-fire instructions, and tells him she’ll make some broth for Sensei to drink later. 

“Though,” she adds at the door, “It can take weeks to get over the flu, and even then he’ll feel weak for a long time after. You’re—what, eleven? twelve?—you should think about picking up a job while you’re here. Plenty of people are looking for some young help.”

Gintoki remembers the handful of coins in a bag tucked up Shouyou-sensei’s sleeve and thinks: okay. 

She’s right. Plenty of people are looking for help. Every morning he plugs his nose and empties out the basin that Sensei’s been getting sick into, sets a glass of water by Sensei’s pillow, and then sneaks out to help mill rice and plant winter wheat in the fields that outline the town. He returns before noon, refills the glass of water, and wanders around town asking shopkeepers for errands to run. In the evening, he washes dishes in the inn, and uses their cooking fire to heat damp rags, which seem to help Sensei’s breathing. 

A lot of the people in the town are sick. The farmers have sneezing wives and coughing children. The shopkeepers ask Gintoki to run across town and tell their relatives that so-and-so’s not feeling well, dinner will have to wait. He tells them why he’s in town and they nod in sympathy and give him home remedies. 

The proprietor’s wife was right. Everyone does get sick. 

The routine works for a few days. People eye his hair and the sword strapped on his back, but seem content to dismiss it as a nomadic curiosity. But soon the requests trickle down to nothing. People begin to pull their children inside and lock the doors when he walks down the street. The braver throw salt or beans at his feet. Doors sprout talismans faster than flowers in the spring. Little strips of paper at first, then monkey statues and the heads of sardines impaled on holly branches. The few requests he gets are for things he is sure Sensei wouldn’t want him doing: bring misfortune upon my neighbor, curdle the milk, strike barren the women and a pox on the children. Set fire to my creditor’s home and lick their melted skin with a fox’s tongue. Peel off the flesh of the lover who spurned me and crunch their bones between your teeth. 

Even the innkeeper and his wife give him a wide berth, when he’s not paying them or buying food. 

Despite this, Gintoki’s got a fair bit of money by the time Sensei is well enough to sit up and sip at the soup the innkeeper’s wife made. That night, Gintoki is only woken up once by Sensei’s coughing. 

When Gintoki gets up the next morning, Sensei is sitting with his back leaning up against the wall, waiting for him. 

“Gintoki,” he says. His voice rasps, like his throat is a comb and the flu is running its fingers down the tines. “When was the last time you ate?”

There’s no lying to Sensei. Gintoki shrugs. “Dunno. But the inn lady says that if we go a few towns up, there’s a doctor with real medicine, so if you can walk—”

“I have no need for a doctor,” Shouyou-sensei says. “I do need for you to sit down.” When Gintoki reluctantly complies, he continues, “Thank you for taking care of me. But you can’t forget to take care of yourself.” 

Gintoki looks at the floor and runs his thumbnail through the divets in the tatami. “Doesn’t matter,” he mumbles. “S’not like I’m gonna get sick.” 

“There are worse things in life than illness,” Sensei says. “One is forgetting that you’re human.”

“But I’m _not_ ,” Gintoki says. It’s not fair. Before all of this he hadn’t thought of himself as human or not-human. He had just been Gintoki, and Sensei had just been Sensei. Even on the battlefield he hadn’t thought of himself as being anything. He just was. But Sensei’s human, and that means something. 

“Aren’t you?” Sensei asks. 

“What? Of course I’m not. It’s obvious.” 

“Tell me,” Sensei insists. “It’s not obvious to me.”

Gintoki subsides into sullen silence. Sensei only pretends to be stupid when he knows Gintoki is wrong. 

“I apologize,” Sensei says. “It’s my fault. I’ve kept you away from people for too long. Help me up.”

Gintoki grabs Shouyou-sensei’s hand and pulls him to his feet. Sensei leans against the wall, catching his breath, and then says, “Perhaps it is time we settled down. You have to know, Gintoki, that just because you don’t think you’re human, it doesn’t mean you can’t be humane.” 

For Shouyou-sensei, settling down seems to mean finding a dilapidated building on the outskirts of society and moving in. It takes them months to even make it habitable, to be able to step on the floor without worrying that the rotted wood would buckle under your weight. For someone who has slept under the stars as long as Gintoki has known him, Sensei is very particular about how to rebuild the place. Gintoki spends days replacing tatami floors. His hands are always chapped from the vinegar solution Sensei makes to get rid of mold, and he wakes up every morning with small red bites on his ankles and wrists from the mites they haven’t figured out how to get rid of yet. 

Sensei sets Gintoki to beating bundles of rice straw with a stick. Sensei sits on the porch with a sliding door in front of him, carefully wetting the wheat-water glue with a rag so he can peel off the old, tattered paper. When Gintoki’s done and the rice straw is softened, Sensei shows Gintoki how to roll bundles of straw between his palms to twist it in one direction, then how to braid the bundles in the other direction to make a strong rope. His fingers ache with the blisters; he’s thankful that they’re done cleaning mold. When he’s made one that lives up to Shouyou-sensei’s standards, they attach hemp fibre cloth cut into zigzagged shapes to the rope and hang it above the door. 

“What do you think about opening a school?” Sensei asks sometime later. “Where anyone can come and learn?” 

“I don’t know who else would want to come and learn from you, sensei,” Gintoki complains, because Shouyou-sensei has decided he would benefit from mathematics as well, and he’s been laboring over an abacus all day. But he thinks it might be nice. Sensei had managed to teach him, after all. He probably wasn’t the only kid who needed to be saved. 

He’s right. Soon there are parents from miles away sending their kids to Sensei to learn how to read and write. Gintoki skips a lot of lessons in favor of wandering in the woods that separate the school from the nearest town. There are dirt paths that mark a precarious map to and from the school and town, and Gintoki picks up a habit of walking just off them. This, at least, gets Shouyou’s approval, if his perpetual absence from class does not. There are kids, especially the younger ones, who are easily confused by the winding paths or scared in the muted light that makes it through the canopy. 

He doesn’t like being around the other kids. They’re too loud, too excitable, and too jumpy, and they think Gintoki is strange. He knows there are rumors that he is a demon in thrall with Shouyou, and for all the value of a free education, parents warn their children to stay away from the boy with the white hair. After a few weeks of Gintoki not eating them, they tend to forget their parent’s warnings, but never go so far as befriending him. Gintoki doesn’t fault them for it, and whatever happens, he still has Shouyou. 

It’s about this time that Shouyou-sensei becomes just Shouyou. Shouyou-sensei is what everyone calls him, here, and what he and Gintoki have is different. 

He is napping, curled up in the branches of a tree, when someone inconsiderately loud says, “I heard you took good care of my little brother. You sure got some nerve for the son of a good for nothing.” 

Gintoki snuggles into himself and pulls the collar of his yukata up over his ears. 

“I hope this will serve as decent training,” says a second voice, and it sounds considerably younger. 

“Wait,” says a third voice, another kid. “Trying to get revenge on someone training? And you call yourself warriors? And fighting with numbers…” 

“Katsura, huh?” says voice one. “How lucky for us. I was getting sick of sharing a classroom with someone who reeks of poverty.” 

Gintoki opens his eyes and sighs. It sounds like they are revving up for a fight, and that would be noisy. He has avoided being anywhere near a battlefield for years, and wasn’t about to try and sleep through one now. Some things are meant to be left behind in childhood. 

He inches forward, his feet hanging off the side of the branch, and parts some leaves to peer down. There are two kids, about his own age, facing off against—Gintoki counts—nine teenagers. They all look rich: well-fed and well-dressed. 

One of the kids raises his wooden sword. “Hear that Katsura?” he says to the boy standing just behind him. “There’s no one honorable here.” 

“Get them,” snarls voice one, a teenager. 

Gintoki pulls Shouyou’s sword from his belt, grips the hilt like a javelin, and throws it into the dirt just in front of the teenager’s feet. Everyone’s heads snap up. 

“Blah, blah, blah. How annoying,” Gintoki says. “Are you bastards in heat? If you wanna train, do it at your own school. Haven’t you spoiled brats learned how to play hooky properly?” 

“Who are you?” the teenager demands. 

Gintoki schooches a little farther along the branch, flexes his ankles, and drops. It’s pure coincidence that his foot hits the first teenager’s shoulder. Gintoki has the awkward experience of tripping in midair; there’s a second where his body thinks he’s landed, and then the teenager’s falling one way and Gintoki’s falling the other. Gintoki manages to recover himself and hits the ground in a half crouch. The teenager just falls on his face. 

It’s more dramatic than what Gintoki had been aiming for, but it works well. “Take a nap,” he says, yawning as he stands up. He rolls his shoulders, trying to wake himself up. “Things like this shouldn’t be half-assed. I’ll join your guys’ fight. Will that get it over with quicker?” He reaches forward and pulls Shouyou’s sword out of the dirt. 

A second teenager holds up his sword in a way that even Gintoki finds embarrassing. “Like hell!” he says. 

One of his friends grabs his shoulder. “Wait!” he says from between clenched teeth. “Isn’t that the demon of Shoka Sonjuku?”

Gintoki throws his head back and laughs at the sky. “The demon of Shoka Sonjuku?” he repeats, and looks back at their second in command in time to see Shouyou, very neatly, bopping each of the teenagers on the head with a fist. They turn in anger, see an adult, and flee. 

Gintoki takes a step back. 

“Well said, Gintoki,” Shouyou says. “That’s right. This kind of half-heartedness is unbecoming. And ganging up to bully a few is out of the question.” 

Gintoki takes another step back. The two kids are in the way of a proper retreat. 

“That said,” Shouyou continues, and he’s looming over Gintoki now, with the faint smile that says trouble better than any calligraphy, “You half-growns are a hundred years too early to know how to play hooky.” He bops Gintoki. “In a fight, both parties are to blame.” 

Gintoki is gripping his head in both hands and moaning when Shouyou looks at the kids and says, “You two should head back to your school at once as well.” He grabs Gintoki’s arm begins marching him back to the school. “Some of the girls are learning flower-arranging today, Gintoki, and I think it would be beneficial for you to sit in.” 

That would have been the end of it: a wasted afternoon spent with girls weaving peach blossoms and dogwood into his hair, and some dirt to clean off the tip of Sensei’s sword. 

But the next day, one of the kids, the one at the front who had taunted the teenagers, shows up on the doorstep of the school’s dojo. 

Gintoki, who has taken to running the kendo lessons while Shouyou teaches the younger kids hiragana, leans on his wooden sword. “Oi,” he calls, “I know you’re new to this, but it’s pretty stupid to play hooky by going to a school.” 

The kid turns on him, and Gintoki is taken aback by the genuine anger in his eyes. “I want to challenge Yoshida Shouyou to a duel.” 

Gintoki sticks his pinky in his ear and twirls it while he thinks. “Didn’t I tell you to start fights at your own school?” he asks. “It’s kinda rude to outsource things like this, you know.” 

“I want to challenge Yoshida Shouyou.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Gintoki says, and makes up his mind. “Unfortunately for you, Shouyou’s not in charge of this dojo. I am.” He straightens up. “You’ve gotta get through me before even thinking of going after the boss.” 

Gintoki thinks the kid’s going to protest, or even walk away in anger, but he pulls himself together and says, “Fine. Don’t regret this later.” 

Gintoki beats him. Of course he beats him. But he can admit that the kid made him work for it. He’s sweating by the time he gets a good hit in, almost out of breath, and that pisses him off. He’s losing his touch. It’s probably that anger, burning deep in his chest and running like fire through his taut muscles, that makes him go overboard. He doesn’t just want to make this kid lose, he wants him to think twice before even looking at a sword again. 

One of the school kids must have gotten Shouyou, because the kid is cradled in Shouyou’s arms by the time Gintoki’s vision clears enough to see the already-dark bruises crawling up from under the collar of the kid’s yukata and the streak of blood across his cheek that shouldn’t have been possible with a wooden sword. 

Gintoki waits outside Shouyou’s rooms while he bandages the kid. His knees are pulled up to his chest, and he presses his sheathed sword against his shins. 

“Goodness me,” Shouyou says. His voice is muffled through the thin barrier of the shoji. “I’ve never heard of a dojo challenger attacking a temple school. Thank goodness this is the extent of your injuries.” 

There’s a faint rustling sound, as of sheets being pushed back, and the kid says, “I actually wanted to fight you. I never thought I’d lose to him.” 

“You are plenty strong,” Shouyou says. “After all, you pushed Gintoki that far, my little dojo challenger.” 

“But I lost.” 

“You did.” Shouyou sounds very cheerful about the admission. “And that’s why you’ll grow stronger. Victors only gain self-satisfaction and conceit, but you have gained something far more meaningful. There’s nothing to be ashamed of.” Ouch, Shouyou. “Besides, that boy is a unique case. In order to live and survive, he was forced to become strong.” 

“Did you take him in too?” 

“I wonder,” Shouyou laughs. “Did I take him in, or did he take me in? I can’t tell anymore.” 

Gintoki pushes himself to his feet and walks away, but not before he hears the kid ask, “Is he really a demon?”

The kid shows up again the next day, bandages wrapped around his neck and one plastered to his right cheek. 

“Give it a rest already,” Gintoki sighs, resting his wooden sword on his shoulder. “How many times are you gonna do this?” 

“As many time as it takes to win,” he says, and shows up the day after that with gauze taped over his eye. 

The second consecutive week of dojo challenges, the kid’s arms are shaking as he raises his sword, and there’s a gaunt look around his cheeks. 

“You’ve been eating, short stuff?” Gintoki asks when the kid’s on his back. “You’re never going to get big if you don’t eat five solid meals a day.”

The kid says, “Fuck off,” and leaves. 

It takes a while. The kid—Takasugi Shinsuke, he spits out between parries—is nothing if not persistent. 

Takasugi looks at him from across the blunted tip of his wooden sword. Every scab on Takasugi’s face is vividly contrasted with Gintoki’s own unmarked skin. He’s lost nothing of the fire in his eyes despite losing everything else. Gintoki can respect that. 

The burst of speed is unexpected. There’s not many people who can keep up with Gintoki when he’s trying. Takasugi’s bare feet shift on the lacquered wood, strengthening his stance, and he thrusts forward before Gintoki can recover from his last attack. The tip of the sword hits his collarbone and sends Gintoki sprawling. 

“Point!” says the ten year old traitor who’s officiating the match. 

Takasugi’s and his matches have become the unofficial spectator sport of Shouyou’s school. There’s a crowd of kids around them, and Gintoki can admit it hurts that they all cheer when the match is called in Takasugi’s favor. 

“You actually beat Gintoki! Amazing!” 

“You did it!” 

“Don't—Don’t act all friendly with me,” Takasugi protests. “We’re not schoolmates!” 

“Oh, you’re not?” Shouyou says, stepping out of whatever hidden shadow he occupies when he wants to make a grand entrance. “And here I thought you’d already joined our school. I mean, you were so enthusiastic every day about train—about challenging the dojo.” 

“Oi,” Gintoki says, picking himself up. “What’s with the cozy atmosphere?” He points an accusatory finger at Takasugi. “He’s a dojo challenger. He took our dojo. He popped my loser cherry!” 

There’s a hand on Gintoki’s shoulder. He turns around. Some kid with an unbearably kind expression on his face holds up a rice ball and says, “We’re not on opposing sides anymore. Let’s all make rice balls together.”

Gintoki looks the kid up and down. He’s got long hair tied up in a ponytail and the face of a buddha. The quality of his clothes makes him think that he might be one of the village kids, but Gintoki’s sure he would recognize someone so infuriating. “Never mind which side you’re on, _who_ are you? Why do I have to eat rice balls made by a complete stranger?” 

“Who said you could eat? Just make them.” The kid snatches his proffered rice ball away, like he’s afraid Gintoki’s going to eat it anyway. 

“What kind of ritual is that?” 

“Oh, sorry,” Shouyou says around a mouthful of rice. “I ate one already.” 

Takasugi and the buddha-faced kid hang around the rest of the day. Gintoki makes himself scarce. It’s not until dusk is falling, and the setting sun casts everything into shades of orange, and Takasugi is walking out of the gates to the school, that Gintoki says, “Hey, you.” 

Takasugi stops walking, but does not turn around. 

“Takasugi, was it? Don’t get cocky just because you won. In the time it took you to beat me once by sheer miracle, how many times did I beat you? If you truly wanna beat me—if you want to make up for all your losses—come back tomorrow.” Gintoki turns, rests Shouyou’s sword on his shoulder. “I’ll be the one to win then too, though.” 

They have to leave soon after that. Some of the country lords hear that a teacher with a pet demon has taken to corrupting the local youth and put out a bounty. It’s buddha-face ( _It’s not Buddha, it’s Katsura!_ ) who appears on their doorstep and tells Gintoki that they have to leave (“all debts should be repaid,” he says, as if that means anything). 

Shouyou spends a long time wandering around before Gintoki can get him to leave. He says goodbye to each student individually, and passes back all their homework as if it matters how beautiful their writing is or how accurate their arithmetic anymore. He takes down the ropes that Gintoki wove so long ago and loops them around his wrist before putting them, coiled, into his bag. He carefully removes Gintoki’s own calligraphy from the walls and presses them between two carved wooden plates to prevent the long sheets from bending or tearing, and ties them together with twine. 

Gintoki has to drag Shouyou out, but he himself returns that night and walks the school grounds one last time. There are some bit-part warriors wandering around, kicking down doors and making crude jokes. They’re ridiculous; Gintoki can tell that even if some of them have been in battles, none of them have been in a war. There’s something about the way they walk that gives it away, as if they haven’t been told about their own mortality. 

He finds Takasugi and not-Buddha-it’s-Katsura crouched behind the fence. They look very young, to Gintoki’s eyes, hiding in the dark with their wooden swords. The way the moon casts Katsura’s skin in dark blue makes him look underfed, and Gintoki can see rope burns on Takasugi’s forearms. 

“The prestigious academy’s biggest prodigy and bad boy are teaming up,” Katsura whispers to Takasugi. “We should be able to stall the officials.” It’s embarrassing, the earnesty in the words, as if Gintoki and Shouyou would ever need help from anyone, as if these green boys could be that anyone. But Shouyou wants Gintoki to be kind, and to be with other children, and it’s not as hard with these two as it is with his other schoolmates. They, he thinks, could have been different, if they had the time. 

Gintoki steps into the middle of the path. “Two students from a prestigious school? Don’t make me laugh.” He rests his own sword on his shoulder. “Don’t you mean the den of evil that’s darkening children’s souls, the Shoka Sonjuku’s three demons?” 

“Why are you here?” Katsura asks, and he doesn’t look like Buddha now. He looks like he’s going to strangle Gintoki, if given half a chance. “I told you to run.” 

“That was for Shouyou.” Gintoki yawns. “Why would I have to run?” He grins at them, showing his teeth. “Besides, you guys learned how to play hooky and enjoy the nightlife. You’re part of our school already. Of course I’d come to say goodbye.”

Gintoki adjusts his grip on his sword. He can hear them now, the first group of soldiers and priests whom the lord sent to deal with Shouyou. They’re attempting boldness in the face of their own superstition, and force laughter as they shine flickering torch light down each abandoned hallway and alley. 

“But you’ve done enough already. I’ll handle the rest, so get out of here,” he tells Takasugi and Katsura. At their looks, he continues, “Shouyou and I are nomads to begin with. We can find a home anywhere. But you guys are different. If you get involved any further, you won’t be able to go back.”

He smiles again, the glow of the approaching lanterns casting his face in red shadow. “You don’t want to get stripped of your status as humans, do you?” 

Takasugi laughs. He pushes himself to his feet, and walks to Gintoki’s side, drawing his wooden sword as he does so. “If I had anywhere to go, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.”. 

“I’ve been all alone since my grandma died,” Katsura says, following suit. “More than anything, I no longer have any ambitions I’d need some kind of status to fulfill.” 

Takasugi raises his sword. He grips the hilt with both hands, and Gintoki can see the paleness of his knuckles where the bone pokes at the underside of skin. “Even if I had ambitions like that, I wouldn’t want them just handed to me,” he says. “I’d find them with my own eyes, and grab them with my own hands.” 

“That so?” Gintoki says. He’s not sure that they believed him about their humanity. “I won’t say anything more, then.” 

It’s a long while later when Gintoki does say something more. They’ve moved far away from any place where the name Shoka Sonjuku has meaning, and Shouyou is talking about starting a new school. The three of them are sitting together under the stars, limbs tangled together, and Gintoki says, “It’s true, what they say, you know. About me.” 

Takasugi props himself up by digging his elbow into the space just above Gintoki’s knee. He thinks he can feel his kneecap move. “That your brain is a hairball too?” he asks. “We know.” 

“The demon thing,” Gintoki says. 

“Right,” Takasugi says, laying back down. “You’re as indestructible as an oni with a club, your personality is the demon drink, you laugh if I talk of next year, you’ve got the looks of a Bodhisattva and the heart of a demon. We know.” 

“I’m serious,” Gintoki says. 

“Some of us are trying to rest,” Zura says into the crook of Gintoki’s arm. “Don’t encourage him, Shinsuke.”

“I’m _serious_ ,” Gintoki repeats. 

Takasugi flicks a pebble in Gintoki’s direction. “Out demon, out,” he intones. “Make room for luck.” 

Gintoki sits up. “I can prove it,” he declares, while Zura and Takasugi are vocalizing their indignation at their pillow moving. He pushes himself to his feet and steps over Zura to grab Shouyou’s sword from the tree he had leaned it against before lying down to sleep. He unsheathes it. 

“Gintoki, what the hell?” Takasugi asks, sitting up and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Zura is less attentive; it looks like he is about to fall back into dreamland. His eyes are only half-open, and his breath comes slow. 

Gintoki twists the pummel in his hand and attempts to turn the sword on himself, but his arms are shorter than the blade and he can’t angle the sword towards his chest and keep his hands on the hilt at the same time. The most he would be able to stab through is his foot. 

Zura pushes himself upright. “Gintoki,” he says, carefully, and his eyes are wide now, though exhaustion still tugs at his features. “Gintoki, what are you doing?” 

Takasugi massages his temples with his thumbs like a man going through a midlife crisis. “He’s just trying to get a rise out of us. Knock it off already.”

He could probably saw through his leg, Gintoki thinks. Even cutting off his foot would make them believe him, but it’d be awful waiting for it to grow back. 

“Should I get Sensei?” Zura says, half-whisper and half-fear. “It’s fine, we believe you. You’re a demon, calm down. Put down the sword.”

“I don’t believe him,” Takasugi says. “That’s what he wants you to say, Katsura, so he doesn’t have to do anything.” He smirks at Gintoki. “Go on, I dare you. I bet you can’t.” 

Gintoki holds up his sword as high as he can reach, and whacks the edge of the blade against his side. It’s not an elegant maneuver; it’s not even a maneuver, really. He swings the sword like it’s a weighted pendulum, or like he’s chopping down a tree. It does its job though: the blade slices deep into his side, cleaving through him from a few inches below his ribcage to the slope of his pelvis. He has to tug to get it out, and there’s a moment of panic when he’s afraid that he’s won’t be able to, he hasn’t done this in such a long time, but it pulls from his skin with a pop. 

Zura screams. 

Shouyou appears immediately. Unusually for him, he doesn’t grasp the situation immediately. Gintoki is standing, his left side covered in blood, holding a sword; Katsura has started to hyperventilate; Takasugi is staring at Gintoki with such a blank expression that Gintoki thinks he might have gone into shock. 

“Gintoki,” Shouyou snaps. “Go wash the blood off in the river. I’ll get bandages.” 

When Gintoki gets back, Shouyou is sitting in between Zura and Takasugi. Zura has several blankets wrapped around his shoulders and is babbling incoherently. He’s crying so hard that he’s shaking, and every mantra of “he’s dead, he’s dead,” is broken by cracked sobs. Takasugi is sitting where Gintoki left him, staring at Gintoki’s blood on the grass. Shouyou is holding his hand and rubbing circles into his palm. 

Gintoki had taken off his yukata and now has the fabric bunched up and pressed to his side, but the blood is still flowing freely, and the limpness in his arm is making it hard to apply real pressure. “Uh, Sensei?” he ventures.

Zura bursts into a renewed round of hysterics at the sound of Gintoki’s voice. Takasugi’s eyes snap up, and he stares unblinkingly at Gintoki, his face ashen. 

“Come here and sit down,” Shouyou sighs. “Show your classmates you’re alive. Now, raise your arm—are you sure you can’t?” 

Gintoki is sure. and Shouyou lets go of Takasugi’s hand to raise Gintoki’s arm himself. Gintoki lets go of the yukata. 

Shouyou looks at the wound, closes his eyes for a second, breathes deeply, and presses the cloth back onto it. “Kotarou,” he says, “Would you please go get my bag? Shinsuke, help Gintoki sit down and keep pressure on the wound.” 

When Zura returns, Shouyou tears open a triangular packet of medicine and shakes powdered dragon’s blood resin over the wound to stop the bleeding, and anoints his skin with rosewood until the pain is dulled. Takasugi presses clean cloth to Gintoki’s side while Shouyou wraps gauze so tightly around Gintoki’s stomach that it’s a struggle to breathe. 

“Gintoki,” Shouyou says, “I think you owe Kotarou and Shinsuke an apology, and all of us an explanation.” 

Gintoki closes his eyes. He can’t look at Shouyou’s calm disappointment, or Zura’s face all blotchy and tear-streaked. Takasugi is still staring at Gintoki’s side like he can go back in time if he concentrates enough on what he wants to erase. 

“Well,” he says, “Do you know how soldiers die?”


End file.
